Microreview: Language as a space for performance activation

Let The Sea Abdelkarim
"Unfortunately, I Got Different Bodies, But One Tongue", performance generated from the book Let The Sea Eat ME: To Perform a Ferry.
Date
2021 September
Subtitle
Noor Abuarafeh reviews Mohamed Abdelkarim, Let the Sea Eat ME: To Perform a Ferry, Esmat—Publishing List and MACACO PRESS, 2021.
Type
microreview
Author / Publisher
Noor Abuarafeh for NewsLibrary
Author Info

Noor Abuarafeh lives and works in Jerusalem. Her work addresses memory, history, the archive and the possibilities of tracing absence, rethinking representational forms of history and its relation to different frameworks, like museums, cemeteries and zoos. Recently Noor participated In Berlin Biennale (2020), Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017), Off-Biennial - Gaudipolis, Budapest (2017). http://www.noorabuarafeh.com/

Language

English

Also published here

Newsletter No. 38

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Reviewed Publication

Mohamed Abdelkarim, Let the Sea Eat ME: To Perform a Ferry, Esmat—Publishing List and MACACO PRESS: 5 March 2021.

Links

View the publication at mohamedabdelkarim.com.

Image Credits

"Unfortunately, I Got Different Bodies, But One Tongue", performance generated from the book Let The Sea Eat ME: To Perform a Ferry.

The book is a textual investigation of different subjects that the artist is interested in. The text is considered the first space for the performances to be performed, and the starting point for diverse forms, interactions or collaborations with the text. As the reader interacts with the performances they merge, are constructed or generate new performances to be added to the book or performed beyond the physicality of the book form.

The text was written to be spoken and takes its inspiration from different imagined characters that are too real to be fiction and too blurry not to be a dream; the characters move from one landscape to another, whether via crossing borders, switching from one language to another, or crossing the body. These characters bring notions of migration, geography, male and female bodies, and the sea as the borderline of the “other landscape” to the surface.

The book was written in English. Using a language that the artist does not master makes the language a tool and a subject at the same time, bringing with it all the challenges of migrating from one language to another.